Sherell Bates was 34 weeks pregnant with twins when she went back to school shopping at a North Carolina Staples on Friday. She ended up having to expose her belly to a police officer, who thought the bump under her shirt was stolen goods. Bates was trying to pay for notebooks and other school supplies for her two older children at the Staples in Pineville, North Carolina, when she was pulled aside by an officer monitoring the store, reports Stephanie Tinoco of WSOC. The officer asked Bates what was under her shirt. Her response: Twins. The officer didn’t believe her, Bates said. So she lifted her shirt to show him her belly, so he could see that I’m just a regular pregnant person buying school supplies, she told Tinoco. The episode is one in a long string of recent highly publicized incidents in which black customers at retail stores around the country have been suspected

of theft when they were simply trying to shop. For Bates, the experience of shopping while pregnant with twins was stressful enough without being accused of faking her pregnancy to steal school supplies. Discrimination against black shoppers is widespread Staples issued a statement about the incident, saying that, while a customer was shopping, a manager mistakenly thought they were possibly shoplifting and asked a police officer that happened to be in the store to talk with the customer. After a quick conversation,the statement continued, the issue was resolved, the manager apologized to the customer and refunded their transaction due to the inconvenience. A separate statement from Staples to Vox on Monday said that after an investigation into the incident, the manager involved had been fired. The manager in question did not follow correct protocol and also failed to adhere to our existing policy on how to interact with our customers, the statement said. Watch video below